Atheist and Believer..IN LOVE??

I am very free about my atheism, I am very open about my belief and why i feel the way i do. i am in the dating scene for the first time in four years after being married to a theist and i am finding love to be a difficult and elusive capture. i met what i believed to be a wonderful man from SC, very religious man, religious family. i told him from the very beginning that i am atheist, i will never be christian and i am fully acceptable of his views and beliefs and that i expect the same courtesy. he told me he had no problem with my non theism and we went from there. upon said gentleman returning to SC for leave i began to see a difference in our conversations and what not..i politely told him that i did not know what he wanted me to do, as he would be re deploying once he came back from leave. our conversation quickly turned to him saying that he had "concerns" about our relationship, my beliefs and that we would be raising our kids with "a different set of values and morals" i became very offended at this because i felt that he was insinuating that because he is a christian and i am not that i had a lower set of morals and values..WTF??? now, i am perfectly happy letting my children explore religion of all kids, attend different gatherings of people from many beliefs but at the same time, i know what is right and whats wrong and just because i do not believe in a "god" obviously there are people that really believe that i automatically have a lower set of standards than someone who does believe. i gracefully and with class and courtesy, send the gentleman on his way, i am back to the drawing board :) thanks for reading my rant, i dont know if i filed this in the right category, but i wanted to put it out to people that understand!

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As a Unitarian Universalist, I can be an atheist (30% of us are) and be in relation with Christians, Jews, pagans, and people of many other beliefs. Couples with different beliefs come to our congregations. It sounds like the original poster's husband is a fundamentalist Christian, but many Christians are not fundamentalist and some can change from fundamentalist/conservative to liberal. There's even an Episcopalian priest in my church who married a Unitarian Universalist. I don't think her beliefs are Christian, but he says his are even though he fully embraces our principles (he says he's a trinitarian and a unitarian even though they seem contrary, but he says it's metaphor) and he will not try to compell someone else to be Christian. None of the UU Christians try to compell others to believe the same way they do. I have met many other Christians who are the same (Quakers, even liberal Catholics).

I'm not saying that there are no fundamentalist Christians who try to convert you - there are plenty. But the atheist who does the atheist.about.com web site is married to a Christian woman and that's why he didn't go to the Godless American rally in DC in 2002, but I went. I emailed the organizers and got a message from the president, Ellenn Johnson at the time, and she said that even though I was a UU who considers myself an "agnostic" that I could go to the march, but she didn't want Christians there. The host of atheist.about.com protested because he couldn't bring his wife.

Just saying, not all Christians are the same and atheists and Christians can be married.

If his theism isn't that big a deal to him, as you seem to be saying, then maybe it will be ok. I was still a deist when I got together w my wife and that turned out to be not much it a concern at all. Theists tend to believe their beliefs trump all others, (back to my thing, saving people from a burning bldg would trump most other concerns).

Another problem, I find, they tend to have is that as they believe it to be right to come to one conclusion w/o sufficient evidence, a particularly important and foundational conclusion at that, they then tend to come to plenty other conclusions way to quickly as well. Like the simple concept of "Idk" is somehow beyond them.

Only you know if your hubby has these limitations to a problematic level. And so only you can make this decision.

My wife is Jewish and she simply cannot understand how I can be so "moral" without god. I've had another girlfriend in the past say that she "sees god in me" but didn't find it funny when I said "Well does that mean I should see a doctor?"

Some people purely equate morality with religion. Don't let it get you down. It can be quite frustrating, but luckily for me, my wife already had relatively older children when I met her. She was also very open about her children exploring other faiths (except for my lack thereof). So, I happened to avoid a very sticky situation as I'm sure she would not have been so open with me if we would have raised our own children. I just try not to think about what fights we would have had as it's rather depressing that these juvenile outmoded belief systems would have stood in the way of our love.